Discuss the latest comic book news and front page articles, read or post your own reviews of comics, and talk about anything comic book related. Threads from the two subforums below will also show up here. News Stand topics can also be read and posted in from The Asylum.

Hellblazer, the longest running Vertigo book of all time, will end in February 2013 with issue 300, and with it ends the last non-creator owned book being put out by the “Big Two” that actually gave a crap about quality stories, continuity, character development, and treating its readers with any semblance of respect.

Begun in 1988 as a spinoff of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Hellblazer follows the adventures of anti-hero John Constantine as he uses his considerable magical skills to fight crime, defeat demons, get laid, cure cancer, and be awesome. With almost 300 issues in the can (all of which this writer owns in single issue format), Hellblazer has had very few issues, let alone arcs or runs, that would be considered bad by people with any taste, so of course DC decides it’s time for the book to go.

“They” say that Hellblazer is ending so that a new book, Constantine, can start “focusing on the detective's adventures in the re-launched DC universe.” Fuck that. Basically, this means that DC thinks its readers are too stupid to know the difference between the Vertigo book and Jeff Lemire's Justice League Dark in the Nu52.

The new, non Vertigo, no cussing, no boobs, no sex, no fun, writer of Constantine, Robert Venditti (best selling author of The Homeland Directive) stated:

"He's going to be the same age that he is in Justice League Dark and the same character that people know and recognize _ the drinking and smoking, the con man aspect of him _ that's going to be very much part of the series,"

Fuck that!

Venditti went on and spewed some nonsense about how he equated the challenge of writing Constantine to the success he had reviving Valiant Entertainment's X-O Manowar, because it’s the same thing to bring a book back after 10 years and re-launch a book so that idiots won’t be confused.

I’m not normally one to get upset by crap like this, I mean, its DC – the same people who decided that bringing back Barry, the guy who died to save an entire universe, was a better alternative than keeping around the only former side-kick to have made good life choices as an adult, Wally West – so I don’t really expect all that much from their higher-ups, but I had hoped against hope that after 300 issues, Hellblazer was safe from their ineptitude.